Public service editor

Andrew Metcalfe left his job as secretary at the Department of Immigration late last year. Photo: Andrew Meares

The crisis-ridden Immigration Department is poorly managed, its workers mistrust each other and its executives' financial illiteracy poses serious risks, an independent review has warned.

The frank report, written by a panel of government and business specialists, also describes a culture of buck-passing, in which few staff take responsibility for problems.

The review, overseen by the federal Public Service Commission, found weaknesses in each of the 10 areas it assessed and offered little praise for the leaders of the 10,000-strong workforce.

It warned the department remained at risk of ''another high-profile failure'' such as the illegal detention of Australian citizens Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon, which prompted government inquiries in 2005.

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Immigration's long-serving secretary, Andrew Metcalfe, left the post late last year to head the Agriculture Department.

His replacement, Martin Bowles, said he accepted the findings and agreed there was ''significant room for improvement. I am confident [the department] will be a better agency for our staff, for our clients and for the government as a result of this capability review.''

The review team, led by former mandarin Ken Matthews, acknowledged Immigration's work was complex and highly contentious compared with other agencies.

But it found it failed to plan or innovate effectively because it focused on reacting to crises.

It also said many senior executives believed ''risks and issues are 'glossed over' to provide good news stories rather than delivering difficult messages''.

The report told of a ''heavily risk-averse'' culture, in which basic decisions were ''routinely escalated because there has been an excessive reliance on the risk-scanning intuition of a small number of senior people''.

This ''led to a low tolerance for error, with staff believing that their ideas will not be seriously considered by managers'', it said.

While the department's mid-level executives were ''proficient technical managers'', their core management skills were ''patchy''.

''Managers, particularly [senior executives], do not always understand their financial management responsibilities, which poses serious risks for the department.''

Managers were also often unclear about their responsibilities, saying: ''They were not always sure who to go to and there are so many fingers in the pie that no one owns the problem.''

The review found some public servants from other agencies had low regard for Immigration's senior executives, saying they were ''not always present 'in the forums that matter', are slow to acknowledge risks and impacts on other portfolios, are not always open to ideas when consulting, and do not always represent the department as a whole''.

A 2011 survey found 33 per cent of Immigration staff believed recruitment decisions were routinely not based on merit, a higher proportion than the public service average of 25 per cent.

Among the review's recommendations were greater support for managers and involving all staff, rather than a select few, ''in the risk-scanning process''.

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said on Monday the department had ''made it very clear it made a number of changes'' in response to the review.

''We're confident it will continue to make those improvements.''

5 comments

I'm not impressed with such reports or the publicity which they generate. My immediate reaction was to wonder just who made up this ''panel of government and business specialists''. I notice it was chaired by a worn-out ''mandarin''. I wonder how the department he presided over would have fared under such scrutiny. As for references to Ms Rau and Ms Solon, those cases were dealt with by the usual critiques in a manner out of all proportion to the facts. Surely the fact that Ms Rau, for instance, suffered from a psychiatric disorder was a major contributing factor to her situation. Anyway, they're both laughing all the way to the bank, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer. (Suppose it makes a change from those ''irregular maritime arrivals'' who've taken advantage of our laughable legal system, on the grounds of mental disturbance occasioned by lawful internment, to line their pockets.)

I don't know the composition of the Department of Immigration but I suspect it would contain many staff of various ethnic origins, no doubt, some of whom are sympathetic to so-called asylum seekers. That may not augur well for staff cohesion and, more importantly, conformity to Management's lawful objectives, particularly in respect of off-shore processing and the like.

Of its nature the APS is generally Leftist. The current Government is Leftist - except when it comes to border control. It doesn't take an ex-mandarin to imagine the sorts of stresses and strains that scenario creates within an organisation such as the Department of Immigration.

Commenter

Eudaimonia

Location

Kingston

Date and time

January 02, 2013, 2:08PM

Not another Customs debacle. Anyone coming in who shouldn't? Nudge nudge wink wink. Turn a blind eye. Makes one wonder, what with the state of the Customs Department for one, where it is a danger to the country, and not a protection agency as designated. Add the Refugee market where to date has cost 6.5 billion dollars from a handful to 30,000 in 5 years, unbelievable! Bye bye NDIS, Gonski etc. This country is heading towards third world standards where anything can be got with who you know and/or what you're willing to pay. But then, the Govt wants Australia to drop it's Anglo/European heritage and move forward towards Asia, Ironically, there is a huge effort to beat corruption where it exists worldwide, yet this land seems to be turning a blind eye to this horrid trait.

Commenter

Mary

Date and time

January 02, 2013, 2:24PM

Mary: In other words, white people only.

Commenter

Bob

Date and time

January 02, 2013, 2:50PM

Bob where did you read colour? Are you racist?.

Commenter

Mary

Date and time

January 02, 2013, 3:09PM

De we actually need an Immigration Department? Before you answer this straight foreword question ask yourself what is Australia’s sustainable population. Well there are almost 23 million of us and our population increases by approximately 1.6% or about 368 thousand annually. And according to one CSIRO chief scientist our sustainable population lays between 15 and 18 million? So why do we employ a 10 thousand strong workforce to spend millions of tax payer dollars to increase what is an already unsustainable population? One could travel, for want of a better word, in the gridlock on our city roads, or the daily crush in those sardine cans called public transport utilities to come to terms with the problem first hand.

Like most of our species we blame something else has if it has pertinence to the problem, in this case immigration inefficiency is blamed for being inefficient? God forbid this department should become so efficient it may increase its workload, indeed the more inefficient it becomes the better, otherwise we could all drown in the mire of unsustainable growth at the behest of big business that cracks the biggest whip in Canberra. Who gives a damn if immigration inefficiency keeps our population numbers down, I certainly don’t.

The Immigration Department is the blood that also fuels unsustainable growth like expanded coal mining and coal production. A production that already has our total global Co2 emissions running at 1.144 billion tonnes per annum being 3.813% of total global emissions, work that percentage obscenity out for a world population of 7 billion? So I suggest we give the sloths at immigration an additional rostered day off each week and a fluffy pillar to rest weary heads on when attending immigration chores, which hopefully will mean much longer to dream of.